


the virtue is

by anenigmaticsmile



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Dying World, Far Future, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 04:40:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15901089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anenigmaticsmile/pseuds/anenigmaticsmile
Summary: one leaves, another arrives





	the virtue is

**Author's Note:**

> Would you believe this happened because my roommate left her plant in the sink?

They will open the house in two weeks, he knows.  That’s how it always is, when someone leaves.  That’s how it always is, when a building stands empty.  Tomorrow no one will remember he ever lived here.  In a year, no one will ever remember he had lived.

He passes through the rooms for the last time, one hand holding the battered rucksack to his shoulder, the other glancing across the familiar surfaces.  Here is his bed, where nights have been passed sleepless.  Here, his cedar chest that yet holds his grandfather’s suit.  It cannot go with him.  Not where he goes.

The dining table is scratched from years of meals, years of claws digging across its surface from pets long forgotten.  Here, the kitchen, the corroded tap that flushes red with rust.  The stove that will not light, not matter how long he coaxes at the flame.  He’d given up, eventually, leaving the house and meals cold while plants sent trendils through the iron frame.  Those plants own most of the kitchen now, in fact.  He could never find the heart to cut them back, the vibrant life.  He wonders how long it’ll be until the cleaners rip them forcefully from the fixtures and the walls.  He hopes they’ll put up a good fight.

The floorboards creak, a soft sigh that echoes his own as he paces to the door.  It’s scratched, keyed.  Memories that were never erased before him.  He shouldn’t hope his marks stay, but he does.  He shouldn’t be missing this place, but he does.  The door drags across the beaten threads of the red rug he bought almost six years ago, now faded into a dusted pink from the tread of heavy muddy boots.  There is no hum of life in the building, his the last apartment to be vacated.  His the last memory to be lost.

A soft swish and a heavy click and Jongin finds himself running down the blue carpet, skipping steps to get out of the building.  It’s not his anymore.  It’s not right.

Jongin bursts through the glass doors at the front of the lobby into a dusted brown world of shining silver and burning glass and forces himself to slow.  It’s only a hundred steps to the bus, blindingly white in the old sun.  It’s only a hundred steps to his new self and he can’t make it stop but he can at least make it wait.

\--

It’s the greenest place Baekhyun has ever seen.  Grass grows in carefully-tended yards in front of spacious grey and white buildings, flowers lining the edges of the streets.  The few people already here, the first wave of the repopulation, wander lazily down the street, on foot and on bicycle, carrying fresh harvests from the gardens, goods for their homes.  The dome above filters the old red sun, protecting the land below.  It’s a far cry from the desolate brown this place must have been, just a few years before.

He’s in Block A, at the head of the street.  The building still looks the way it must have when it was built, with glass doors and square shape and numerous windows, but a thick layer of soft grey paint has been brushed over its bricks, making the impression softer, friendlier, kinder than the harsh red must have been.  Not that Baekhyun’s seen red brick before.

He can’t help but wonder of those who had lived here before the dome, those who had left years ago.  He shouldn’t, he knows. _The virtue is to forget._  That’s what they say.  Normally he’s good at that.

His key unlocks the glass door at the front of the building and he makes himself walk slowly through.  There’s been a total rehaul of the building, he knows.  The shapes are wrong for the era, the colors more contemporary than he’d expect, but there’s still little reminders of the past.  Carefully hidden, but they’re there.  A wood panel here, a burnished fixture there.  Even the carpet on the stairs, obviously a replacement but a necessary one, gives hints.  The stairs must have been carpeted at one point.  Blue, he imagines, prompted by the bare tinges in the current color.

The door to his new apartment is subtly keyed next to the lock.  It’s obviously been sanded, but the marks are still there.  Baekhyun adds one more as he fights the deadbolt and steps into the room with the barest sigh of the floors.  There’s a table in here, and a kitchen, both things far too old to have been recently installed.  Probably too bulky to have been removed, he thinks.

The table is small, square, four chairs surrounding it.  It’s recently sanded, recently stained, but that still doesn’t cover up the nail marks in the wood.  Pets?  Not in the last decade – not in the last century, not here.  But once.  _The virtue is forgetting_ , he reminds himself.  Moves on.

The kitchen is old, but the appliances are new, cupboards refaced, counters resurfaced.  It’s just the bones.  That feels better.  The stove is new and shiny, the icebox is perfectly modern, not whatever was in use when this building was vacated, and the water runs fresh and clear.  Everything Baekhyun should be able to expect.  His position affords it, absolutely.

He runs his hand against the wall as he progresses to check the bathroom, just to the side.  There are a thousand things unnoticeable about it and one thing unforgettable.  Tucked into the corner beside the shower is a great wrought iron stove, probably original, he would assume.  The bathroom must have been expanded into the old kitchen at some point.  And that would have been enough, really, to have a stove in his bathroom, but of course it is not.  It wouldn’t have been left if it wasn’t interesting.

The great plant that twists throughout its body and into the very walls, creating a living sculpture in the corner of the bathroom definitely counts.

It certainly doesn’t help Baekhyun forget he’s living in someone else’s ghost.  He just wonders who they were.

**Author's Note:**

> [talk to me](https://elliesword.tumblr.com)


End file.
